So we start off with something totally different from the original
film: a rainy setting where a car picks up a hitchhiker! Oh wait, it’s still
not opposite day…man I’m bad at this. To be fair, the situation IS pretty
different. It’s actually revealed to be a kidnapped child, and the guy driving
is his kidnapper. The kidnapper gets shot by C. Thomas Howell, who I am
surprised actually returned for this. Take a guess if Rutger Hauer came back or
not…

So yeah, Howell’s character Jim Halsey is now a cop all these years
later. Funny, considering the last interaction he had with the police in the
first movie was when he held one of them up at gunpoint and stole his car. You
would think that would sorta bar one
from entering into the police academy and becoming an officer of the law. Isn’t
it kind of like a church burning black metal musician becoming a Lutheran
minister?

Oh, maybe he DIDN'T fall too far from the tree after all...

Either way, Jim kills the kidnapper and then flies away in his plane to
go see his girlfriend Maggie. Yeah, he has a private plane, a little Wright
Bros-esque number that I’m surprised the police department just lets him fly
around to catch criminals in. He actually tells Maggie that yes, he did find that child kidnapper by flying
around in the plane, so I’m not making that part up. This whole thing has a
very carnivalesque superhero feel to it now. Like Jim Halsey is Robin Hood or
something…only he can afford a private plane.

Yes, I'm so sure we have a reason to be afraid of this ominous tracking shot...I'm sure it's NOT AT ALL a red herring...

Yeah, this plot point isn’t going to be very important to the film, so
I can just skip it I guess. Maggie makes a huge deal about Jim killing that
kidnapper, and I really don’t get why. I mean yeah, he killed someone; it sucks
by default. But at the same time…he killed a CHILD KIDNAPPER. Possibly a
molester and a sex offender, too; let’s just assume. Why is this such a big
deal? Maggie’s words are “You can’t just go around shooting people all the
time!” I’m sorry, but how is killing ONE man who KIDNAPPED A CHILD the same
thing as “going around shooting people all the time”? Yes, Jim. Listen to your
girlfriend. Please stop killing horrible murderers and child molesters. That’s
just so rude of you.

I love how they're sexualizing her after she's been working underneath a plane and probably smells like a BP oil spill right now...

After some dubiously silly and unbelievable acting, Jim decides that
they need to go back to that desert road where the first movie took place to
talk to his friend Sheriff Esteridge, now retired. Esteridge tells him over the
phone that maybe it’s time to come
back and revisit the past, and face his fear…I’m sorry, WHY?! What’s the gain?
To talk to his old buddy about killing that kidnapper? I just…don’t think that
reason is strong enough to justify an entire movie!

But, sigh, they do end up
going, and of course it takes them all of five minutes to find a hitchhiker,
which Maggie insists that they pick up, because a sandstorm is coming. I just
love this character’s sympathies: she’s all for the child molesters and the
hitchhikers! Truly America’s most under-represented, oppressed minorities! Jim is suspicious and has numerous flashbacks to the first movie again.
Which honestly begs the question, why. Why are you watching this? Why not just
go watch the first one again? The flashbacks make it painfully obvious even
this early in that the original will be the better film when this one is over.
So why? Just turn this off now, pop in the 1986 classic The Hitcher and you’ll be
much better off for your time.

So, yeah, the hitchhiker guy is played by Jake Busey, because yeah,
when I think of classic horror villains, I think of Jake Busey right next to
Rutger Hauer from the original. Sure. Keep on living in your fantasy land,
movie. Busey doesn’t seem threatening or creepy like Hauer did in the original,
so it’s more ambiguous for a few minutes. Halsey screams a lot and acts like a
jackass, and kicks Busey’s character out of the car anyway, prompting Maggie to
get all self-righteous again. Why do I get the idea this is the kind of
relationship where she picks out his shirts and socks every morning?

Of course Jake Busey IS the new killer in this film, which is revealed
a few moments later. And honestly, the problems with this compared to the
original are so boldly underlined, it’s practically able to be seen from space.
The original movie worked because it was all so spontaneous and random. Jim was
stranded out in the desert with this guy he just met trying to kill him. He was
just passing through, just driving his rental car across the country. In THIS,
Jim actively seeks out the desert
road again, and so the spontaneity is lost. If a character knows where he’s
going, and intentionally goes, the fear and the surprise just aren’t as great.
In a better movie, maybe this could have worked – maybe if Jim was trying to
hunt down the Hitcher again all these years later and kill him, after hearing of
some similar murders in the same area. But the way it’s done here just feels
contrived and forced.

"If I show my teeth and look constipated enough, maybe people will be engaged by my character!"

They are forcing this plot to
happen. How do we get Jim back in the desert years later after he naturally
would move far away? Well, it’s simple, just invent a flimsy excuse and have
him go back! Nothing just comes naturally the way a good plot does – these are
manufactured, doctored thrills forced into being by C-rate writing just to get
to the end of the goddamn script.

Case in point: you remember how the original was relatively fast-paced
and ambiguous as to what the Hitcher was doing? How he kept to the shadows and
only appeared in short bursts here and there to incite violence? How his
framing Jim for murder was understated and didn’t seem too obvious? Well, that’s all out the window here. One of the first things Jim
points out to Maggie is that the Hitcher always tried to frame him for crimes. Well, here that plot point is hammered in until you just don't care. It's totally without subtlety. Busey’s Hitcher makes a wimpy phone call to police misleading
them about Jim and Maggie. He tells the police that Jim and Maggie are
going to kill Esteridge as opposed to
just going to talk to him. When Jim and Maggie get there, of course Busey has
somehow magically just killed them, in really vague and boring ways…certainly
not the masterful suspense set up in the first one when Jim came across the
abandoned family station wagon after Hauer was done with it.

The first movie's killer killed people and was enigmatic and fearless. This guy is the equivalent of a phone-pranking douchebag with too much time on his hands. Great killer, movie; great killer.

I’m sorry – I know I’m just bitching about how much lamer this is as
compared to the first one. But it’s just no comparison. This movie is simply a
dumber, less interesting version of the first one. Nothing feels subtle or
mysterious anymore. Everything is boldly defined and spelled out like the
audience is dumb. Oh, is Busey trying to frame Maggie for his own killings?
Please, movie, hammer that fact in until the whole plot just seems completely
neutered and bland.

I guess if I’m going to continue actually summarizing any of this, Jim
gets killed off by Busey from a couple of gunshots and dies in the desert.
Maggie is the main character now and she walks around for a bit and then gets
knocked out by Busey, who puts her in some kind of old water tower that’s about
to fall down. He points out – he actually says it – that the water tower is
about to fall. So, how exactly the hell did he carry a grown woman up it and
put her in without it collapsing? I just love when a movie verbally states its
own plot holes.

Maybe he can fly now. It honestly wouldn't surprise me. They've already surpassed the original in implausible scenarios and ridiculous kills...might as well just throw all realism to the wind.

She gets out of that with very, very little suspense, and while the
desert settings are all very nice, I’m just so bored. There’s no danger in
this! Where is the sense for the epic? Where is the fast paced adventure and
high speed explosiveness? Even when the movie does speed up and try its hand at that, it comes off as a cheap
imitation, sluggish and sort of drunk. Like if the first Hitcher got washed up
and fat. Maggie isn’t interesting at all, far away from the fiery performance
C. Thomas Howell gave in the first one, and Busey is just a joke, coming off
more like a college frat boy playing pranks than a menacing, unpredictable
killer.

There’s one scene where he pops up from behind a diner counter like a
Jack in the Box, and then cuts his own finger off and throws it in a pot of
boiling water nearby. Is this a Freddy Krueger movie now? It’s just completely
retarded!

Eh, still better than The Dream Child.

The cops arrest Maggie for all of that shit and the Sheriff actually
talks reason, and gives us another big glowing neon sign as to why this sequel
doesn’t work and the original DID work: Maggie has family and friends, and a
job. People back home can verify that she is who she says she is, and that she
has no reason to do any of the crimes Busey is framing her for.

In the original, Jim Halsey was a shifty, slightly rebellious loner
whose only familial contact couldn’t BE reached and had no ID or anything because the Hitcher stole them from him. There was fairly reasonable
suspicion as to his innocence, and the way Hauer's killer character played things, you could see
why Halsey would be under scrutiny. And as it was 1986, the communication fields
were shaky enough as it was – there wasn’t a lot of ways to go check up on any
of his stories. This is 2003. There are ways to PROVE beyond a doubt that this
woman would have NO reason or cause to commit such crimes. Hell, pick up a phone and make a call, you morons! I'm fairly sure her identification wasn't stolen at any point either, which makes this extra stupid. If these cops used
their brains, they would see that the woman in front of them is really not very
suspicious at all, and couldn’t do anything she’s being accused of.

But I guess dumbass small-town cops need a reason to exist, and so they
just ignore all logic and say, yeah, some crazy guy with no background and no
alibi for anything is accusing a well-to-do woman from a civilized place of
gruesome, insane crimes? Must be legit! No reason to actually think and
investigate at all, is there? That stuff’s for nerds!

"We don't really like using our brains in police work out here. It's just not the true way of the desert cop. We just hate actually thinking about motive and plausibility, and instead just arrest the first person we find without asking questions. Truly we are the greatest cops ever."

The Sheriff does believe her though. Which could have proved for some
drama, if Busey didn’t kill him two minutes later, in a very unspectacular
manner. What ensues is…

Okay, I guess this COULD have been cool...but here it's just dull and ridiculous, frankly, and I'm not sure how they managed to make a plane chasing a truck evoke that reaction.

…proof that the movie just doesn’t give a shit. In their attempt to
one-up the crazy chase scenes from the original, we get a really boring and
implausible scene where Maggie steals a small plane and chases after Busey, who
is in a truck. I guess it’s not the worst ever, but come on. It’s stupid.

We do get one kind of cool scene when Maggie knocks him out and then
ties him between two trucks, like Rutger Hauer did to that girl in the first
one. It’s…a bit silly, yeah, when you consider that neither of these characters
had anything to do with that film, but it does create some atmosphere and is
the only part of this whole mess where I got any tension or anger between these
two.

But of course the stupid police show up, and even though Busey has
killed several of their own now, they still go for Maggie and fire at her,
thinking Busey is innocent. I love how he puts on the innocent act when the
cops arrive, saying that Maggie attacked him for no reason and what not. It’s
practically closer to an 80s Ferris Bueller-esque comedy than a horror film.
What a joke.

Cue the "wah wah" noise.

So that’s The Hitcher II. What a bland pile of blandy blandness. I
guess some parts are alright, but really, that’s only because they ride the
success of the original so hard. Most of this is just pointless, as it copies
the original note for note and isn’t near as good. It’s a dumb, vapid flick
that won’t leave an impression on you when it’s done, except for minor
annoyance at how hard it failed to replicate anything that was good about the
original – in fact, a lot of the time it’s like they were actually trying to do
the opposite of what the original did. I guess it IS opposite day.

But this is only a minor offense…a pedestrian annoyance.

Beyond this petty misdemeanor of a film lies a much greater evil; a
primordial and demonic entity that mortal men tremble before…THE REMAKE!

Monday, June 17, 2013

So here goes my review for Red Dragon, the remake of the classic
Hannibal Lecter thriller Manhunter. This is a silly, often soft-headed flick
that likes to think it’s “upgrading” the classic film by making everything less
subtle and having a bad guy that likes to flex his pecs naked like a drunk
Dragonball Z character. Sound terrible yet? It is. Let’s give it a look.

…hmmm…well, this is an awkward predicament. Red Dragon…wasn’t too bad.
In fact it was actually pretty frigging good. Just like the original Manhunter.
It wasn’t, yknow, anything amazing,
and it had a few problems, but for a detective thriller, it’s one of the better
ones you’re liable to get out of the mainstream examples of the genre. So
overall I don’t have any major problems with it.

Well, this is turning into a boring review. What am I supposed to do
now? Just talk about how good everything is, and make a few “ehhhh” comments
about the plot holes and silly moments here and there? There aren’t even that
many problems! It’s gonna be one of my shortest and least impressive reviews if
I keep on like this! Isn’t there some other film I could review that has some
slight similarity to Red Dragon, so as to keep a little bit of continuity?

A supernatural horror movie about Samoan tattooing culture could
potentially be interesting. I think the makers of this movie took that as a
challenge to make the most boring thing possible.

So we start off with some kid who carved a pentagram into his arm
getting the tattoo cut off by his super-religious Jesus freak father. It’s
pretty cliché and boring and actually has about zero actual relevance to the
film. Why did I even mention it? Because the film will, twice, so I figure I
might as well not skimp on representing the film in the most realistic way
possible.

Then we get the title of the movie over the main character’s ass: truly
the greatest way to represent your movie.

Apparently this is Jake, a tattoo artist who says he knows ancient voodoo
powers that can help heal the sick, or some shit like that. He gets hired by
this rich guy who lives in the mansion from Eyes Wide Shut, and even advises
the guy to take his sick son to a doctor. But the rich guy says nope! His son
needs a tattoo and that will heal his ailing health! So Jake the greatest
person who ever lived chooses to NOT call a doctor and leave immediately, and
instead just go along with crazy rich guy’s crazy schemes.

Damn modern hippie medicine techniques...

Then later on we see that same rich guy angry that his son died after
the tattoo – shock and awe – didn’t end up working. Gee, when even the GUY
GIVING YOUR SON THE TATTOO recommended a doctor over the tattoo, you would
think that would be enough proof to go to a goddamn doctor!

"I'm mad at you for my own deficient parenting!"

Just add this guy to the Poltergeist/Ring club of horrible horror movie
parents, I guess…

Anyway, so Jake gets pushed down by crazy rich guy and cuts his hand on
this tattoo instrument thing. Apparently, if you don’t mind me spoiling
anything, this means that his tattoos can now kill people. How? This
fantastical leap in logic is just so brilliant and well thought out…that it
completely escapes me. The mark of any good horror movie, truly.

So he decides he wants to return that tattoo object to the person he
stole it from, who lives in New Zealand. I’ve heard of worse excuses to start a
horror movie…oh wait no I haven’t. So he goes to New Zealand and I’ll admit I
don’t know much about that country. But I really have to say, any country that
has a sign like this welcoming people in is cool in my books:

After that, I guess Jake goes and sees an old friend who greets him by
insulting him and saying he’s wronged him. They have a weird friendship. Jake
does some tattoos for people in New Zealand and gets invited to a party. Then
he goes and talks to a rejected member of Bebe’s Kids about how there’s some
kind of shadowy figure following him that he can’t see, but is nevertheless
there. Amazing. Then we get some other stuff about how Jake isn’t welcome there
because he doesn’t understand Samoan culture.

…which is, to be fair, totally understandable. Jake is an asshole! He
steals from other tattoo artists and pretends that his tattoos can do things they
can’t. He’s a scam artist. In the real world, this guy would be shunned even by
the tattoo community in his own country, let alone the sacral practices of an
ancient culture!

I just love how no attention is given to the Samoan culture in this movie aside from the tattoo stuff, and even then only to push its BS ghost story. It would be a more interesting movie if we actually had some good characters and writing that accentuated what was so interesting about the culture. But no, we just get a shitty ghost movie with a very light veneer of "culture" spread over it. What a load.

So yeah this is all really dull so far, if you couldn’t guess…why else
would I be analyzing the politics of tattoo culture? He goes and meets his
friend Sina, who is as generic a horror leading lady as you can get. She’s
kind, patient and understanding and will have sex with Jake in about fifteen to
twenty minutes. Oops, did I spoil that too? Damn.

They go see some guy who doesn’t like Jake for no reason. Jake decides
to give the best first impression ever by poking around the guy’s house
uninvited and disturbing his wife in her bedroom. Isn’t he just a class act?
The final straw is when he knocks over a bunch of stuff and the guy kicks him
out. Sina rewards this stupidity and incompetence by inviting him to come to
her uncle’s party, because yeah that
would sure really happen…ugh.

There we get some more nonsense about how everyone hates Jake. Yes, we
the audience share your sentiments entirely.

Later on there’s a pool party, where some kid gets shoved into a pool
and then it kills him for no reason, filling up the pool with bloody ink!

What happens when newspaper comic strip characters piss in the pool...

I just love how the reaction to all this is so normal. Nobody even
really freaks out over it. They’re sad that he’s dead I guess, but at no point
do we ever get any shock and awe at the bizarreness of people turning into ink.
Isn’t that something? I guess these New Zealand tattoo cult people are just
desensitized.

Then Jake meets up with Sina at her place where she examines all his
tattoos. We find out that Jake was actually the kid in the opening sequence,
whose father cut off his pentagram tattoo. So that traumatic experience
actually made him want to go into tattoo
stuff more? Uh, okay movie, whatever you say. It’s your stupid, illogical world
after all.

After that, we finally get something happening as the two of them have sex. I'd post a picture of it if anyone cared, but hey, at least it's still better than endless monologues about how the Samoan culture doesn't like outsiders, which is all that's been happening so far otherwise.

While that’s going on, we see another woman waking up and finding out
that her husband has turned into ink splotches and stuff – AND MESSED UP THE
CARPET! DAMN HIM!

The next morning Jake returns home to find the angry sister of the kid
who died in the pool. She’s mad because the tattoo killed her brother. Again I
say – why is she not more surprised by all this? Are their superstitions really
that deeply ingrained? I get that she’s distressed and angry. But why is she so
nonchalant about the fact that her brother turned
into a splatter of ink in the pool? Shouldn’t that be a concern?

Oh well, the movie has no time for that! It only has time for scenes
like THIS!

…I don’t think I’m drunk enough for this movie.

Jake goes back to his place and finds angry sister girl in the shower
and melting into ink, too. I think the makers of this movie got high while
watching the ending of Wizard of Oz too many times. We then get the worst
episode of ER ever:

That light is going to blind me if I stare at it too long.

Of course she dies and then Jake has to go save Sina, because he gave
her a tattoo as well. She freaks out upon hearing the news and goes back to her
father, whose advice is for her to go to church. The funniest thing about this
is, it works. As soon as Jake takes her out of the church, she starts getting
way worse and vomiting up blood and all kinds of shit, like instantaneously –
it starts happening right after she leaves the building. So really, what this
movie is saying is that God exists and can protect people from tattoo demons,
as well as every other voodoo-level superstition out there, if they go to church.
And hey, in fact all superstitions are actually real. Really!

There’s some kind of bullcrap story about some kid who didn’t get his
tattoo finished and ran away, and apparently that makes him a ghost who can
kill people now because some idiot cut his hand on a tool. How does this make
any sense? Jake goes to see that little Bebe’s Kid reject from before and the
kid can apparently – get this – channel the
spirit of the dead guy, but only when loud rap music is playing and the car
is driving over the speed limit.

This is where I draw the line, movie! This is where I stop believing anything you throw at me!

…or some shit, I don’t know, and I don’t care either. They figure out
that it was Sina’s dear old dad who committed the crimes and killed the kid who
is now a ghost and haunting everyone. So after the most racist thing I’ve ever
seen in a horror movie…

…the dead kid’s dad comes back and makes Sina’s father cut his own
tattoo off to shame him or something. I guess having him arrested for murder is
a stupid idea. Sina and Jake are okay, and because of all this she decides to
go back to America with him and everything. There’s an annoying taxi driver
bugging them to stop talking about stuff and get in the car because he has many
more customers waiting. And I’m not even kidding: this is how the movie ends.
With an annoying taxi driver bothering the main characters to get in the car
and leave. How is that even a real
ending?

You can practically smell the stench of no inspiration seeping out of
every pore of this movie’s infected tattoo areas. It’s a bad modern flick with
all the clichés the genre is known and loathed for. It’s not as bad as The
Grudge or anything, but it’s sure trying. Pointless, slow and boring, with more
time spent on the Samoan tribal culture than on an interesting story or scares.
The whole Samoan tattoo thing could be interesting, but instead it’s never used
to any kind of quality end. So what is there to be gained here? Tattoos are
evil, but only if you cut your hand on an ancient tool for making them. Then
the only way to find out how to stop the evil is by playing loud rap music and
going to church.

Friday, June 7, 2013

So I just got done with a long series of plane rides while moving to a
new place to start a new job…and because my life has involved so many airplanes lately, I figured
why not review something airplane themed? A movie that focuses on a plane as
its setting and contains some truly out-there and strange ideas as to what
exactly happens on a plane. Could I review Snakes on a Plane? Maybe Red Eye
with Cillian Murphy? Or perhaps I could tackle the greatest airplane movie
ever, Airplane! The possibilities are ripe and rich.

For those of you who have never heard of this movie, there are reasons
why. Very distinct reasons why. It’s a half-baked airplane thriller with a plot
that just seems like they made it up on the go. Are you ready to board this
flight to the void of inane plot devices and ludicrous twists? I sure am.

We start off with some monologue by a guy who I can only describe as ‘not
Sam Elliot,’ because yeah…this movie really hurts itself by having an opening
that reminds me more of a guy talking to a bunch of mentally handicapped kids
than an actual stirring introduction to a film. Who does this guy think he is?

I have no idea who Julian Glover is though. AND BECAUSE OF THAT THIS MOVIE SUCKS! 0/10!

Wait, what? Mark Hamill is in this? And he’s giving a speech about how
sometimes bad things happen to good people? If it was better done…maybe, but either way the narration is
dull and tired. This is really the same guy who gave us that chilling Joker
voice? I also find it hilarious how he’s giving this whole speech about “bad
things happening to good people” while the movie is showing us scenes of people
being rude at the airport because of changes on their flight. Gee, movie. Why
don’t you show us scenes of rich white girls not getting two iPADs instead of just one for Christmas next?

There are a bunch of different characters introduced, among them this
dude, who starts off his flirtations with a pretty girl by talking about how
his daughter died. Way to be totally depressing and morose, guy!

Oh I guess he makes more sense later when we find out his daughter died in the Middle East. But still, the character is so underdeveloped that it hardly matters!

There’s also some mob boss thug guy who basically just throws a fit
over the fact that he can’t fly first class because of some nonsensical reason.
I’m about as intimidated as I was when I saw Macaulay Culkin in the remake of
The Godfather.

Oh okay...there's a chance I just made this picture myself. I know, it looks so real.

On the plane, we get introduced to Italian Meat Loaf, who talks about all kinds of banal crap you wouldn’t want to
hear from a guy next to you on a plane. I will give the movie credit for realistically
simulating an annoying in-flight experience, as it really does capture the
essence of that level of irritation.

What I will NOT give the movie credit for
is half-assed sex scene attempting to turn the movie into a porno for a minute
or two:

I shouldn't be so mean. The director was probably conceived in an airplane bathroom, so maybe this is more true-life than I give it credit. Maybe it isn't all THAT far fetched...

Seriously, guys, are you even trying? This is about as erotic as
watching a bunch of hairy old men playing crochet. Maybe if this was a better
movie, and focused on these two characters more, it MIGHT work, but when it’s
just a cheap excuse to show T&A? It just feels weak as hell. And, what, it’s
followed up with more airplane bickering? Yeah, movie…real sexy there. I don’t
even think people who watch these movies for the porn would find this very
enjoyable. Even the lowest common denominator of T&A-loving cretins would
think this is weak.

Then everybody notices that Mr. Turner, that Meat Loaf guy, went
missing somehow on the plane. We get some semi-suspenseful moments as the
passengers all look around the plane and the flight crew, especially this one
lady and this Middle Eastern looking guy, act kind of shady. These are probably
the best moments in the film, and for a while I thought this thing wasn’t gonna
be too bad after all. Unfortunately the rest of the movie is here to prove THAT
hypothesis wrong…

I'm just so full of suspense about whether or not we'll make it to 2013.

We switch to retarded Mulder and Scully here talking about how the
world is going to end in 2012. Oh no, is the world going to end in 2012? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh….

Oh, wait, no.

So yeah, these two geniuses put a strange illegal cargo box on the
plane our main characters are on. Why? Well, if you want the answer to that,
just give up on that hope and dream right now. Because you’re not gonna get an
answer. At all.

On the plane, this one guy goes crazy because of Mr. Turner’s absence.
It’s confusing because that character really only had the one scene – hell, I
had trouble remembering who he was. He was on screen for like two minutes at
best; maybe not even that. I give the movie credit for making it pretty
seamless when a character disappears, but at the same time, so few of these
characters really have much of an impact to begin with. Who really gives a crap
if the couple having sex in the airplane bathroom disappears? They’re next, by
the way.

Anyway, I digress; that one guy goes crazy and so they punch his lights
out and tie him to a seat. For some reason he isn’t that concerned about it. I
could make a bondage joke here, but that would be tasteless. After that, we get that guy’s life story as he tells the nicest
stewardess in the universe how his fiancée left him and now he’s just going to
go drink for a while. Can you believe he actually says the line “I have a new
lover. His name is Jack Daniels”? Isn’t that just the most asinine and clichéd line
ever uttered in a movie, anywhere, this side of Batman and Robin? Yes, yes it
is. Moving on.

"I have now become a walking cliche."

On the ground, we see that no time has been wasted with rational
thought and tough planning. Instead they’re just gonna bomb the plane right out
of the sky. That’s right: the only two options they have are:

1) Let the plane continue on, with possible terrorists on it,

Or,

2) Bomb it out of the sky no matter where it is.

I never knew the British military was so gung-ho! There has to be a
Doctor Who episode to explain this phenomenon!

On the plane we see the passengers recite all the usual garbage we get
in these movies, which boils down to this:

“You can’t trust him!”

“No, you can’t trust him!”

Yawn. Can we move on to a haphazardly explained, poorly thought out and
illogical reason for the people to have disappeared?

That’s right, apparently the military guy goes down to the bottom of
the plane and finds a bunch of dead bodies stored in the cargo hold or
something. Then we get some stupid flashbacks with the killers – the white
airplane stewardess lady and one of the rich guy’s thugs – violently murdering
everyone who even turned a corner and saw them talking in private! Oh no! They…have
stuff they don’t want other people to hear? I don’t quite get it, movie.
Killing them all IS kind of an extreme conclusion to reach…

Haha, what the hell is this? Friday the 13th or some shit? I get that she's a thief, but does that automatically make her a psycho murderer too? Why are these kills so bloody and gory? By all reason they should be sloppy and wracked with guilt.

Oh, and for some reason, they’re in love now. Yeah. Because that adds
SO MUCH to the story, right?

I really think they just had a bunch of ideas for short films and just mashed them all up together in this one - I mean c'mon, the airplane heist, the savage slasher kills, the supernatural crap that's about to happen, AND this hackneyed romance?

The whole reason they’re doing this is because they wanted to steal
that vase in the cargo hold, which some old guy on the plane knows all about.
Doesn’t this seem like kind of an
elaborate scheme for a robbery? Why not just wait till the plane was on the
ground, and nab it then? Or hire somebody to impersonate a worker and grab it
before the plane leaves? How did they know it would specifically be on THAT
plane, and not on one with people more capable of handling a situation like
this, or who are just plain smarter?
I guess the proper answer to all of these questions is that the writer was
probably smoking too much weed while writing the script. Probably right out of that vase they seem to like so much.

We never see the vase, but I bet this is what it looks like.

I love how they just kidnap everyone else on the plane in the end and
tie them all up. Why bother? You killed half the rest of the people on the
goddamn plane. Was it really worth it to kill all of those people to keep your
secrets when, apparently, the plan was to kidnap them anyway and tie them up?
What other conclusion did you see happening, you numbskulls? That they would
joyfully go along with being hijacked and help out for free?

Can't they just snap those thin ropes anyway? How tight can they be?

So that’s enough stupid for one movie, right? Nope! After that we see
that the vase is actually magical this whole time, and starts making everyone
all zombie-like until they kill themselves or someone else. Apparently the
pilots have been dead this whole time, too, and the plane was just on “autopilot”…sure.
The next fifteen minutes isn’t horrible I guess, unless you actually think
about it. Then it just seems hilariously inept that it was shoved into the last
quarter of the movie without any real build up.

After one guy heroically dive-bombs the plane into the water, “killing”
the evil possessing vase thing, the big bad secret government group arrests
everyone in the control room because of what they saw. And then we get another monologue
about how bad things happen to good people. And then Mark Hamill shows his true
nature…

"I'll get you next time, Batman!"

Aghhhhh! He’s become the Joker again! Run for your lives!

Eh, this movie was just ridiculous, really. The plot was about as
coherent as the drunken memories of your first college party, the characters
were mostly bland and the whole thing had a giant helping of stupid layered
over top. And, you know? I really don’t think it’s all bad. Yeah, it’s got its
problems. I can’t deny that a lot of it is very poorly done. But the thing with
these kinds of low budget movies is that they probably didn’t have the greatest resources at their disposal when it came
to writing and what not. But they tried
anyway. They had ideas and they tried their damndest to make this an effective thriller. And that is worth more than a thousand Evil Dead remakes or new
Star Trek films to me. It’s the beauty of filmmaking and hard work and passion.
I had fun making fun of this, yeah, but it’s the kind of DIY, low budget stuff
I watched in my teen years, and a lot of these movies probably had people
working really hard on them. So for that I can’t fault Airborne, and it
probably balances out the crap the movie has in it too.

But the real lesson we
learned from this movie is, don’t go on airplanes. You might get kidnapped and
then have an ancient mystical god make you kill yourself. Some people don’t get
any luck.